Flights

If your grim financial situation means you have to choose between flying for Thanksgiving or the December holidays, you may get a better deal for Turkey Day. The average price for a round-trip domestic flight in the days surrounding Thanksgiving is $420, about the same as last year, according to airline ticket data analyzed by travel website Priceline.com. But the average fare during the time that includes Christmas and New Year's is up 3%, to $444. If you had booked Thanksgiving reservations back in early October, you would have paid $393 on average, while the average December holiday airfare was $430, according to Priceline.com.

BEIJING -- Private companies specializing in deep ocean search will be hired to continue the quest to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia's prime minister said Monday, and the cost could run more than $55 million and take six to eight months. The U.S. Navy's robotic submarine Bluefin-21 has searched more than 150 square miles of the floor of the Indian Ocean in an area where investigators thought they had detected pings from the Boeing 777's black box transmitters in early April.

Australia-based Qantas Airlines grounded flights across the globe Saturday amid an intensifying labor dispute that is disrupting international travel for thousands of passengers. The company's domestic and international departures were canceled after Qantas announced that it is locking out workers represented by three of its employee unions, including those that represent pilots and baggage handlers. Qantas advised its customers not to go to the airport until further notice and said a full refund will be available to any customer who chooses to cancel a flight.

Florida-based Spirit Airlines has topped another unflattering ranking. A few weeks ago the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund analyzed complaint rates among passengers over the last five years. The ultra-low-cost carrier came out on top of that list. Spirit now ranks at the top again - for the rudest flight attendants. A survey of 3,400 people by the travel website Airfarewatchdog found that 26% said Spirit has the rudest flight attendants. Air Canada came in second with 14%, followed by Frontier Airlines with 11% and Virgin America with 9%. Southwest Airlines was at the bottom of the list, with only 1%. The service given by flight attendants may reflect how they are treated by airlines, according to a flight attendants union.

A federal program that flies deported immigrants back to Mexico resumes Thursday, with 133 Mexicans scheduled to board a plane from El Paso to Mexico City. The Mexican government will transport the deportees to their hometowns. The repatriation flights , which began in October and ended after two months, are intended to give would-be immigrants a better chance of resettling, rather than becoming victims of violent crime in border towns or trying to illegally cross into the United States again.

April 16, 2013 | By Hugo Martin, This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

Computer problems have forced American Airlines, one of the nation's largest air carriers, to keep hundreds of its flights from departing across the country. The Fort Worth-based airline said it has been struggling with intermittent computer problems for a while. Because of the latest glitch, all American Airlines flights that are on the tarmac will remain there until at least 2 p.m. PDT. [Updated , 12:45 p.m. PDT April 16: American Airlines said it would waive the change fees for passengers whose flights were delayed and who wanted to book another flight.

(Bloomberg News) -- British Airways planned to get about 90 percent of its flights off the ground today at London Heathrow airport as the carrier recovers from a second walkout by cabin crew that ended at midnight. The airline, Europe's third largest, canceled 31 of 319 flights from Heathrow today, according to its Web site. .It scrapped hundreds of trips when flight attendants followed a three-day strike with a four-day stoppage. The carrier faces the threat of more walkouts in April if it can't resolve pay and staffing differences with 12,000 workers.

In anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, the nation's airlines canceled about 9,500 flights on Monday and Tuesday, mostly along the East Coast. The greatest number of canceled flights were from Philadelphia International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, La Guardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the air travel tracking site Flightstats.com. Because the storm is on a path for the nation's busiest airspace, the impact of the cancellations has already begun to spread around the country, including 81 canceled flights into Los Angeles International Airport and 84 into San Francisco International Airport.

Frontier Airlines canceled 65 flights Friday and Saturday after some of its planes were damaged by golf-ball-sized hail that swept through Denver on Wednesday, the airline said in a statement . Frontier is waiving change fees for travelers booked on flights through Tuesday. The airline said the damaged planes were on the ground at its hub in Denver International Airport (DEN) when the storm hit. It said that crews were continuing to inspect aircraft and repair any damaged ones, The airline canceled more than 60 flights on Thursday.

As a nor'easter storm threatens the East Coast, the nation's airlines have canceled more than 1,500 flights scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The cancellations, about 1,200 for Wednesday and 313 on Thursday, were primarily scheduled to fly in and out of Newark Liberty International in New Jersey and La Guardia and John F. Kennedy International airports in New York. Cancellations were also made for flights in and out of Philadelphia International, Chicago's O'Hare International and Dallas/Fort Worth International airports, according to the flight-monitoring site Flightaware.com.

A drunk passenger aboard a Virgin Australia flight from Brisbane to Bali prompted pilots to issue a hijack alert that disrupted air travel to and from the Indonesian resort island for hours on Friday, Indonesian and Australian authorities reported. Indonesian troops boarded the flight after it landed at Bali's airport in Denpasar, its original destination, and a 28-year-old Queensland man was arrested, authorities said. Pilots issued a security alarm after the passenger began pounding on the locked cockpit door in an attempt to enter.

A man who went into full cardiac arrest died aboard a flight Tuesday morning from Dallas to John Wayne in Orange County, authorities said. Crew members attempted to revive the passenger but he was pronounced dead at 11:45 a.m. when the American Airlines jet landed. The county's coroner's office identified the passenger as John Selner, 78, of Fort Worth, Texas. Airport spokeswoman Jenny Wedge wrote in an email that crew members aboard the inbound American Airlines flight told officials at John Wayne that a passenger was in the midst of a medical emergency about 11:20 a.m. When the plane landed, the passenger was rushed to a secure place in one of the airport's three terminals until coroner's officials arrived, Wedge wrote.

A teenager who apparently stowed away on a Hawaiian Airlines flight from San Jose to Maui may have stayed warm because of the plane's landing gear, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Heat from the plane's hydraulic lines in the wheel well, as well as heat retained in the tires, could have helped the stowaway survive as the aircraft climbed to altitudes with sub-zero temperatures, the FAA reported. In addition, the plane's steady climb to high altitudes may allow a person to drift into unconsciousness as oxygen becomes scarce.

The dark of night still draped San Jose Mineta International Airport when a 15-year-old boy from nearby Santa Clara made his way on to a secure airport ramp and toward a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767, then disappeared. The slight teenager, first seen on a security camera video, would not appear again until late Sunday morning, when airline workers spotted him, 2,350 miles to the west, wandering on another tarmac, this one at Kahului Airport on the island of Maui. In the interim, authorities say, the boy survived a perilous 5 1/2-hour odyssey - weathering frigid temperatures, oxygen deprivation and a flight compartment unfit for human habitation - as he traveled over the Pacific Ocean in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines jet. The transoceanic misadventure left authorities questioning both how the stowaway so easily gained access to the jumbo jet and how he survived with so little apparent trauma.

A teenager who stowed away on a flight from San Jose to Hawaii and survived did not know where the plane was headed when he climbed aboard, FBI officials said Monday. The 16-year-old, who has not yet been charged with a crime, had run away from home when he climbed a fence at San Jose's Mineta International Airport om Sunday morning and crawled into the left rear wheel well of Hawaiian Airlines flight 45. “He was not planning on going to Hawaii,” said FBI Honolulu spokesman Tom Simon.

The dark of night still draped Mineta San Jose International Airport when a 15-year-old boy from nearby Santa Clara wandered onto a secure airport ramp and toward a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767. Then he disappeared. The slight teenager, first seen on a security camera video, would not appear again until later Sunday morning, when airline workers spotted him 2,350 miles to the west, walking on the tarmac at Kahului Airport on the island of Maui. In the interim, authorities say, the boy survived a perilous, 5 1/2 -hour odyssey - enduring frigid temperatures, oxygen deprivation and a compartment unfit for human habitation - as he traveled over the Pacific Ocean in the jet's wheel well.

Airlines, responding to the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, were diverting flights from affected airports Friday and waiving change fees for travelers headed to or through the Asian nation. As of early Friday Pacific time, all airport gates at Tokyo's Narita International Airport (NRT), except for No. 6, remained closed, according to a notice on the airport's website. It added: "Some departing flights are in service. All arriving flights will be redirected to other airports.

Qantas and Virgin Australia canceled flights that were scheduled Thursday (Australia time) to New Zealand and the western Australian city of Perth as an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano continued to spread into the area and strand thousands more travelers. The cloud has also wreaked havoc in South America . Disruptions of air travel in various parts of the world could last for months, experts say. The Sydney Morning Herald dubbed the cloud over Perth the "plume of gloom" and explained that levels of ash as low as 15,000 feet posed a safety risk for airlines.

Authorities said it was a "miracle" that a 16-year-old boy from Santa Clara survived a flight from California to Hawaii in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines jet. Security video from San Jose's Mineta International Airport verified that the teen hopped a fence and made his way to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45, then managed to climb up the wheel well of the plane and stow away without being detected. He emerged unharmed despite freezing temperatures and a lack of oxygen on a flight that reached an altitude of 38,000 feet, an FBI official said.

BEIJING - Authorities using a robotic submarine to look for wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 said Saturday they expect to complete the search of the “focused underwater area” in five to seven days. Shortly after officials decided Monday to deploy the U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 robotic sub in the Indian Ocean, Navy representatives said the mission could take six weeks to two months as the unmanned vehicle crawled over the seabed, using sonar to map an area about as big as the city of Los Angeles.